[Mz]

But I wish we’d reflect honestly on whether this level of precision is really warranted in all cases and whether such precision always needs to be completely nailed down up front. Maybe we could all try to exercise a little “ordinary charity” and have a simple conversation sometimes.

For some subjects, the precision is absolutely warranted. Good communication requires people to be on the same page. One of the issues with the Internet is that you can have an extremely diverse audience, and this creates communication challenges that you don't have (or rarely will have) in meatspace. One of the things I have been working on is audience development and how to get my message to the people ready to hear it or who have the background or whatever. This is a challenging thing to do online. Figuring out a means to segment out your audience will help reintroduce the ability to "just have a conversation."

Sadly, I don’t have any concrete proposals and am unsure what to do about all this, but… er, I welcome your comments.

Aside from segmenting out your audience and engaging in audience development/education, which is kind of a different thing, you can model respectful communication and social formality. Social formality is useful in situations where we know little about another person. Given the high diversity you run into online, this is one of the antidotes to the problem.

(Though, really, I am torn about posting this comment for other reasons, one of them being that I often feel like I give away my best ideas and can't figure out how to get money out of what I do. SIGH. Money is a chronic source of stress in my life. :-/ )